Book Title: Tales from Earthsea
Author: Ursula Le Guin
Series: Earthsea Cycle #5
Date Started: October 18th 2025
Date Completed: November 25th 2025
Genres: Fantasy, Adventure
Quality Rating: Five Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Four Star
Final Rating: Five Stars
Review:
I've never been a huge fan of short stories - especially novella-collections mid-series - but, as Le Guin rightly explains, an interlude for exploring the past was calling for the world of Earthsea. In her afterword, she talks about the 'now' of fictional stories moving, continuing to grow as reality does. And Le Guin's work is so rooted in the realities of gender pollitics, spiritual connection to the ever-changing natural world, and the nature of power and the self, that you leave this book feeling not like you've read a handful of mini-stories but instead as if you've sifted through an atlas.
I thoroughly enjoyed most of these stories, particularly Dragonfly at the end which is an epic in its own rite. Each story has its own masterfully crafted characters, and touches almost every subject we've grown used to in this series - but the environments in which they do so are unfamiliar for the most part. That's what really showcases the range of the Matriarch of Modern Fantasy: people may be familiar and comforting to us, but throw a fish out of water and it has to learn to adapt, however much of a struggle. That's how people, and cultures, and worlds change.
Few foreword/afterwords are as elevanting as Le Guin's. She uses them to take the reader on the journey she walked as a storyteller, and they amplify the themes and feelings of her stories into treasures beyond the enjoyment of the experience. I've learnt more about storytelling through her commentaries on her own work that many writing courses I've taken.
My quest to complete the Earthsea Cycle is drawing to a close, and the anticipation of the climax has never been higher. Over the last few years I've been trying to complete book series I began in my childhood/teenage years, and cross off the ones I've had sitting on my shelf for ages. Le Guin's work is probably my favourite of all the series I've tried to finish, and it'll sit on my shelf even after it's done for a long, long time.
